It starts to boot Live and gets to:Booting the system (48%)... Press F2 for verbose mode.

After about 2 minutes I get a messed up NVIDIA splash screen then the XBMC splash screen for about a minute then a black screen for approx 5 minutes, then, the USB drive with the Live DVD stops. I can't tell what's going on and I have no idea where to go from here.

I have to say, it seems very likely I will have to go back to running xbmc from XP. I am truly at my wits end and my head aches. I have been working to just get 5.1 to boot up. I have been looking through the forum and I'm stumped. I have downloaded from 4 different places. The 1st wouldn't burn to disk. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th would kind of boot, but, the screen would either stay on and black or go into standby mode and everything locks up.

Have you tried any boot parameters (sometimes called 'boot cheat codes') when you first boot the LiveDVD? See the (slightly out-of-date) SL Wiki page Visual Tour: Part 1 Booting Sabayon Linux for where to enter boot parameters, and the page Cheat Codes for some boot parameters to try. If worst came to worst, you could try using the xdriver=vesa boot parameter to try to at least get SL installed to a usable display, and from there try to install an nVidia driver that works for your GPU.

It's very difficult for anyone to help you because you are using new hardware. There may be very few if any other SL users with your hardware, or even with netbooks or nettops using the NVIDIA ION LE GPU.

A cursory search of the Web shows that there are people running Gentoo on the Acer Aspire Revo (e.g. My Gentoo/Linux Wiki on Acer Aspire Revo R3600 in Japanese), so your cause is not entirely hopeless, but unless someone who knows or uses your hardware wants to reply to your plea, you are up the creek without a paddle.

From what you describe, it could be a video driver problem. I have no idea about nVidia GPUs, but googling your hardware "NVIDIA ION LE Graphics" I found the following article NVIDIA ION Linux Performance which states that it is based on the nVidia GeForce 9400M GPU. So trying a Linux driver that works with that GPU would be my first guess. Doing some more googling, it looks to me like the driver you need is nvidia-drivers

Can you get to a TTY console? If you press Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F2 up to Ctrl-Alt-F6, do you see a text console with a Linux login prompt? If you can login there as root then you can check if you have Internet access (e.g. by pinging) and, if so, do some remedial work such as attempting a text install (see the above-mentioned Japanese Web site, a lot of which is understandable as it shows the commands and console output -- for example he merged (compiled/installed) nvidia-drivers-190.42-r3 with USE flags acpi gtk (multilib) -custom-cflags).

Perhaps someone who uses nVidia hardware can take it from here and offer you some more-detailed advice.

OK. I know when I'm licked. I guess I'm not going to get the XBMC version running.

So, I have booted back to the main Sabayon version (while in the selection screen I hit F4 and selected 1024x768x16). I have been getting used to hitting (and watching) Ctrl+Alt+F1 as system is booting.

I will get a nice NVIDIA splash then Sabayon sparks up into the GUI. Nice!

Up to now, I have used Ubuntu and I was getting kind of used to, but, not comfortable with, the terminal "sudo" stuff.

Is there any true manual for Sabayon 5.1-r1? Is searching through forums the only way to get info? I ask because I am very interested in this distro. I really want to make it work for me. I have been wanting to make almost all of my Pc's Linux for a while. Problem is, I always get into spots where I can't figure out what to do next. For my business to continue to function, I can't have it. And yet, I still want to Linux the whole shebang. Any realistic words?

Yes, no sudo'ing needed here! Actually sudo is still usable, being a valid Linux command, and you can use it if you want although the usual way is to instead use the 'su' (substitute user') command in a Konsole/Terminal window when you need to do anything as the root user, but to only do that when it's really necessary and to log-out ('exit') once the job is done:

If you use the command 'su' then the environment variables and home directory remain those of the user who entered the 'su' command. If you use the command 'su -' rather than just 'su' then the environment variables and home directory become those of the root user.

Actually, the 'su' command can be used to switch temporarily to any other user, not just the root user. For example:

Regarding a manual for SL, the SL Wiki (see link at top right of this page) has some comprehensive articles on SL and the two package managers: the home-grown Entropy binary package manager (Sulfur is the GUI, and Equo is the command line tool), and Gentoo's Portage source package manager. SL is customised Gentoo Linux, so the vast majority of Gentoo's documentation is directly applicable. Which is a good thing, as Gentoo's documentation is among the best, possibly the best, documentation in the Linux world. The Gentoo Handbook (google it) and other Gentoo guides are excellent. Just remember that SL is based on the Unstable/Testing branch of Gentoo (we're talking 'bleeding edge' here), not the Stable branch of Gentoo, so some of the Gentoo documents that cover the Stable branch may be 'out of date', for want of a better phrase. But start with the SL Wiki -- there is a lot to read in there. Entropy is easier to use (and less likely to break your installation) because it's dealing with packages that have been pre-compiled for you in a controlled environment, and is the recommended package manager for newcomers to SL or to Linux.